Camino de Madrid: The Complete Route Guide
Quick facts
- Start: Madrid, Spain (the capital, at the church of Santiago y San Juan Bautista in the centre)
- Finish: Sahagún, Spain, where the route joins the Camino Francés
- Distance: ~317 km
- Typical time: 13 to 15 walking days
- Busiest months: April to June and September to October. Quietest: winter, when the Guadarrama crossing is serious weather country, and high summer, when the meseta is hot and exposed
- Compostela requirement: this route ends in Sahagún, not Santiago, so it earns no Compostela on its own. Most walkers continue from Sahagún on the Camino Francés, and Madrid to Santiago that way is about 675 km in all.
The route: map, elevation, and stages
Weather on the route
Five day forecast from Open-Meteo for the start, midpoint, and finish towns. Check again closer to your walk.
Route track: Nederlands Genootschap van Sint Jacob (santiago.nl), republished with credit. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Dashed line: shared finish on another route.
Open the full-screen map app Plan this route Download the GPX track The same map, app-style: full screen, offline packs, and find-me while you walk. Plan this route opens the planner: regroup these stages into your own days, with a start date and a daily budget.
Places on this way
Places load with the map view.
Elevation sampled from terrain data (Terrarium DEM, built on SRTM) along the track. Hover the profile to trace the route on the map, or focus it and use the arrow keys. Click a stage band, a stage number, or a table row to zoom to that stage.
Stages
| Stage | Walk | Km | Climb | Descent | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Out of Madrid and the Guadarrama foothills · Out of the capital through Fuencarral and Tres Cantos, then the foothills through Colmenar Viejo to Manzanares el Real under La Pedriza, and on through Mataelpino and Navacerrada to Cercedilla. | |||||
| 1 | Madrid → Tres Cantos | 24.0 | +173 m | −91 m | 3 of 5 |
| 2 | Tres Cantos → Manzanares el Real | 24.4 | +399 m | −274 m | 3 of 5 |
| 3 | Manzanares el Real → Cercedilla | 19.0 | +452 m | −173 m | 2 of 5 |
| The Fuenfría crossing and Segovia · The long climb up the Fuenfría valley and over the pass at about 1,800 m, then the descent through the pine woods to Segovia, and the long flat day after it to Santa María la Real de Nieva, splitting at Añe. | |||||
| 4 | Cercedilla → Segovia | 32.7 | +662 m | −822 m | 5 of 5 |
| 5 | Segovia → Santa María la Real de Nieva | 34.0 | +255 m | −332 m | 4 of 5 |
| The meseta to Sahagún · Flat Tierra de Campos country through Coca and Alcazarén to Puente Duero on the Duero, then one farming town a day through Peñaflor de Hornija, Medina de Rioseco, and Cuenca de Campos to Sahagún and the Francés. | |||||
| 6 | Santa María la Real de Nieva → Coca | 21.5 | +3 m | −87 m | 2 of 5 |
| 7 | Coca → Alcazarén | 23.6 | +38 m | −58 m | 2 of 5 |
| 8 | Alcazarén → Puente Duero | 24.9 | +37 m | −67 m | 2 of 5 |
| 9 | Puente Duero → Peñaflor de Hornija | 26.8 | +234 m | −107 m | 3 of 5 |
| 10 | Peñaflor de Hornija → Medina de Rioseco | 24.4 | +92 m | −175 m | 3 of 5 |
| 11 | Medina de Rioseco → Cuenca de Campos | 21.6 | +21 m | −2 m | 2 of 5 |
| 12 | Cuenca de Campos → Santervás de Campos | 21.5 | +45 m | −73 m | 2 of 5 |
| 13 | Santervás de Campos → Sahagún | 18.9 | +62 m | −13 m | 1 of 5 |
Plan your own days
The stages above are one way to walk this route, not the only way. Every stage town starts highlighted below, because the stages as written sleep in each one. Tap a highlighted town to walk through it and sleep at the next stop instead, and tap it again to split the days back. Your days update as you tap. Set a start date and a daily budget here and every day carries its date and its cost on this page. Open these days in the planner to carry this exact grouping into your plan, where GPX, copy, and print exports apply to it. Dates and budget set here are saved into the same plan, so they are already set when you open it there.
Why the Madrid
The Madrid is the capital's own Camino, and it changes character three times. It walks out of a European capital on its own streets, climbs through the Sierra de Guadarrama foothills to Manzanares el Real and Cercedilla, and crosses the range by the Puerto de la Fuenfría, a pass first built as a Roman road, topping out at about 1,800 m, the highest point on the route. On the far side sits Segovia and its Roman aqueduct. Then the route settles into its long third act: the flat, open meseta of the Tierra de Campos, through Coca, Medina de Rioseco, and a string of small farming towns, to Sahagún, where it meets the Francés with about 357 km of that route still to walk to Santiago. It is a quiet route, town based rather than village based, with real cities at both ends of its mountain half.
The shape of the route
- Madrid to Cercedilla (days 1-3): out of the centre through Fuencarral and Tres Cantos, then the foothills take over through Colmenar Viejo to Manzanares el Real under La Pedriza, and on through Mataelpino and Navacerrada to Cercedilla.
- Cercedilla to Segovia (day 4): the mountain day. The long climb up the Fuenfría valley and over the pass, then the descent through the pine woods to Segovia. At 32.7 km with the climb, this is the day the whole route is planned around.
- Segovia to Coca (days 5-6): the meseta begins. A long flat day to Santa María la Real de Nieva (34.0 km, splitting at Añe), then a shorter one to Coca, with its Mudejar castle.
- Coca to Puente Duero (days 7-8): through Villeguillo to Alcazarén, then Valdestillas and the run down to Puente Duero on the Duero itself. Valladolid, the big city of this stretch, sits about 7 km off the line from Puente Duero and makes a well known detour or rest stop.
- Puente Duero to Sahagún (days 9-13): the Tierra de Campos in full. Simancas, Wamba, Peñaflor de Hornija, Medina de Rioseco, Cuenca de Campos, and Santervás de Campos, one farming town a day, to Sahagún and the Francés.
Stages and variants
The stage list in the route explorer above is this guide's one stage list. It runs as a flow in three sections (Out of Madrid and the Guadarrama foothills, The Fuenfría crossing and Segovia, and The meseta to Sahagún), with no separate table down here. The Madrid carries no variant ways in the openly licensed track set we build from, so the flow is sections only. Distances in the list are measured along the route track itself, town centre to town centre.
The thirteen stages are the standard shape of this route: eleven legs in the usual 19 to 27 km band and two long days that exist because the beds do. Cercedilla to Segovia (32.7 km) has no stay on the pass, and Segovia to Santa María la Real de Nieva (34.0 km) splits at Añe, 22.4 km out of Segovia. Splitting the final day at Grajal de Campos is also possible in season. Thirteen days is the standard walk; fourteen or fifteen, splitting the two long days, is the kinder plan.
Key decision points
- The Fuenfría weather call: the crossing is high, exposed country. In snow, fog, or storm, wait in Cercedilla rather than pushing over; the descent to Segovia is long and there is no low alternative line on this route.
- Continue or stop at Sahagún: Sahagún is a proper Francés stage town with trains, so it works as a finish. Continuing puts Santiago about 357 km further, through León, Astorga, and Ponferrada. Decide before you start, because the two walks have very different lengths.
- The Valladolid call: the route itself passes through Puente Duero, about 7 km from Valladolid. The detour buys a big city rest day and one of Spain's great sculpture museums; it costs a day and breaks the stage rhythm. Many walkers take a bus in from Puente Duero for the evening instead.
When to walk
- April-June: the strongest window. The Guadarrama is clear in most years, the meseta is green, and the Tierra de Campos has not yet turned to summer dust.
- July-August: hot and exposed on the meseta half, with long shade free stretches. Walkable with dawn starts and real water discipline; the mountain day is the pleasant exception.
- September-October: the second good window. Harvest country, cooler air, and quiet towns; days shorten on the final stages.
- November-March: a winter walk. Snow is possible on the Fuenfría for months, some small town services close, and the meseta wind is its own weather. For experienced, self-reliant pilgrims only.
Practical notes
- Difficulty: moderate overall, with one hard day. The Fuenfría stage is a real mountain crossing; the meseta days are flat but long and exposed, and they add up.
- Credencial: available in Madrid at the church of Santiago y San Juan Bautista, the route's traditional start. Stamp as you go; on the meseta, bars and town halls are the reliable stamp points.
- Beds: a mix of municipal and association albergues in the stage towns and hostals in the bigger stops. The network is thinner than the Francés, and a few stage towns have one albergue only, so check the key nights ahead in season.
- Food and water: carry a real lunch and full water on the meseta stages and on the Fuenfría day. Some legs have nothing between the start and finish towns.
- Waymarking: yellow arrows out of Madrid and through the Guadarrama, then the usual Camino markers across the meseta. A GPX track or a current app is a sensible backup on the crossing.
- Getting there and away: Madrid is the best connected start on any Camino, by air, train, and bus. Sahagún has a train station on the León line if you are stopping there.
Holy Year 2027 note
2027 is a Holy Year (Xacobeo). The Madrid itself will stay far quieter than the Francés it joins, but its bed network is small enough that even a modest Holy Year increase can fill the only albergue in a meseta town. Book the one-albergue nights ahead, and expect Sahagún and everything west of it on the Francés to be busier than usual.